“My compassion is with the women he assaulted, physically and emotionally. Even Jane will be marked by this. None of them will emerge from this unscathed.”
“Prison will kill him.”
“He should have thought of that before he committed the crimes. It’s time to honor the women whose lives have been impacted by men like him. Dan is a terrible guy, whatever the reason for it. You have to accept that.”
“Prison won’t change that. I just hate to see him die there. I think that’s what will happen to him. If none of the other prisoners kill him, which is a possibility in a case like this, his health will get him. He called me crying last night.”
“That’s appropriate. I listen to women cry every day. A guy like Dan Fletcher doesn’t deserve to be free. Personally, I think that given the chance, he’d do it again.”
“I hope they put him in a decent prison.”
“That’s up to the judge,” she said without emotion in her voice, and it irked her that Bob was so desperate to help him. She thought it was carrying friendship too far, in a case like this. He was also trying to save his own hide and the agency, which she could understand even if she didn’t agree. “I’m not sorry for him,” she said again as she put their breakfast dishes in the sink. “What about us?” she said to him suddenly. “Is there any point continuing this marriage? We have nothing in common anymore. There’s nothing we agree on. Our kids are pretty much grown up. Wesley is leaving for college in the fall.” He had been accepted at Princeton, like his father before him, and his grandfather. “Sometimes I wonder why we’re still married.”
“We love each other, we’re family,” he said weakly. He couldn’t disagree with what she said, but he couldn’t deal with a divorce on top of everything else. Martha had a cold, dispassionate way of looking at things. She didn’t used to be that way. She had been a warm, loving woman, and even passionate when they got married. Somehow life had beaten it out of both of them. They lived together like brother and sister. He hid at the agency and had for years. He never came home until everyone was asleep. He had been an absentee father for most of his boys’ lives, staying in town to have dinner with important authors and big movie stars. In a way, he had had a glamorous life, and she had never been a part of it. She was too busy with her law practice to participate in his life and he had never wanted her to. He wanted to keep his family and his business separate, and in the end, he wound up married to his business and no longer to her.
“Sometimes I think we’d both be happier if we were divorced,” Martha said clearly. “You might find someone who suits you better and makes you feel young again.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked her.
“I’m happy with my work, my friends, our boys, and a peaceful life. We live in this house like strangers. What’ll we do when Wesley leaves? We won’t have anything to talk about, if we even see each other.” He had the feeling that she was pushing him away, and he had already done that to her in his own way. The feelings between them had died a long time ago. They had both been careless with their marriage, and hadn’t protected or nurtured it. Now it lay at their feet like a dog or a plant that had died, or any living thing they had ignored and hadn’t bothered to feed or water. He had no idea how to fix it, and she didn’t seem to care. She was no longer the woman he had married. She hadn’t been for years. He had changed too. He had more to say to Merriwether every day, and he enjoyed it. She was alive and fun, and as unhappy in her marriage as he was in his. She was still hoping there was something she could do to revive it, and their little girl was still very young, but his marriage to Martha seemed to be beyond salvation. It was like trying to breathe life into a corpse that had been dead for years, and she was much more willing to admit it than he was.
“How did we wind up here?” he asked.
“We both worked too hard. We went in separate directions. We forgot about each other and focused on our work. We didn’t talk to each other about anything that mattered. We came home late at night, separately. We did everything that people shouldn’t do, and we thought we’d get away with it, and we’d fix the damage later. There comes a point where there’s nothing left to fix. I think we’re about there,” she said. She had always been honest with him, sometimes too much so. He didn’t dare ask her if she still loved him because he knew the answer, she didn’t. He could see it in her eyes every time he looked at her, and he was no longer sure that he loved her. It was hard to measure.
He walked her outside to her car, and then watched her drive away. It was a lonely feeling, standing there, watching her. He was sure that she must be just as lonely in their marriage as he was. She had been lonely with him for years. She had allowed it to linger, they both had, and neither of them had had the courage to end it.
He was still thinking about it as he rode the train to New York. He wondered if Martha was too, or if she had put that aside, gone to work, and was now engrossed in what she was doing for the day.
He didn’t see the answer right in front of his face. When he walked through the agency to his office and Merriwether walked into his office a few minutes later, his face lit up like Christmas, and so did hers. He hadn’t felt that way about Martha in years, if ever.
Within days of the first photograph the paparazzi took of them, Eric and Allie became the hot item and the most fun to pursue. They were both good-looking people. He was a star growing in size and brightness, and she was a big-deal agent. They looked great, they were having fun, and the press had fun chasing them down and trying to get a story out of it. There was no story. They just loved each other, and were living day to day. But the pressure of having to deal with the paparazzi constantly was wearing on both of them, and Bob Benson’s words that it would kill her career were still ringing in Allie’s ears. That was the one thing that frightened her the most, and Bob knew it. It was like a bomb he had dropped down her smokestack to explode everything at a later date.
A week after Dan went back to jail, Francine walked into Bob’s office, and dropped another bomb on him he didn’t expect. She had made a decision and acted quickly. With Dan in jail and totally discredited in the industry, no one would believe a word he said, and he could do her no harm. He could no longer cost her her job or reputation. His threats were empty. The vile serpent he was had been defanged and her own prison walls, built by him, came tumbling down. She was free. She told Bob she had realized that it would never be the same for her again at the agency. The specter of Dan would be there for her forever. She had lived through ten years of torture almost since her first day on the job. And now everyone knew it. Even if they sympathized with her, she didn’t want to live with the curiosity and the humiliation, the gossip and the pity. She had called a headhunter when Dan went back to jail and was shocked at how quickly they had lined up interviews for her. Her credentials, history, and client roster were flawless. She had thought of going back into publishing as a senior editor, but couldn’t afford to with college on the horizon for Thalia. She needed a job that paid at least as much as the one she had. They found her a better one at a rival agency that was thrilled to have her. It was exactly what she had always said she didn’t want, but it was perfect for her now. It was in the literary department of one of the big impersonal, factory-like agencies that she had always avoided because she didn’t want to get lost in the crowd. But that was exactly what she wanted now: to get lost and become anonymous, where no one would remember that she was one of Dan Fletcher’s victims, and possibly the most damaged one.